Smedley pleased with Williams mettle

Williams' Rob Smedley says he was pleased with the 'mettle' displayed by the squad during last weekend's Austrian Grand Prix.

Felipe Massa capitalised on a mistake in the pits from Ferrari to jump ahead of Sebastian Vettel and secure his first podium of 2015, and Williams' second in succession.

"It would be futile of me to say we didn’t get that podium via some good fortune as well but as people said in the past you make your own luck and we got ourselves into a position," he said.

"We were able to hold on to it, it shows the mettle of the whole team now and how far it’s moved on, we operated very well to keep a faster car behind and that’s the third occasion this year we’ve done that.

"It pretty much shows that if we put ourselves into a position we can capitalise more on it and not let go of it."

Smedley added that Valtteri Bottas did well to combat brake problems to secure fifth position.

"They were reasonably big, he was having to lift and coast for the second of the half of the race, following [Nico] Hulkenberg for 30 laps or something got the temperatures of the brakes up which meant the wear accelerated quite a lot," he said

"In doing that on a cooling track, the temperature comes down on the tyres and you have a double whammy effect that you lose some grip as well, he didn’t have the cleanest of race but it’s the smallest things, as it always is."